Malala Yousafzai Earning Millions on Book Deal, Speeches

18 year old Malala Yousafzai, who came to be known internationally at the age of 14 after being the victim of a terror attack, has garnered attention for becoming a millionaire on the back of sales of her best-selling memoir as well as earnings from her highly sought after speaking engagements.

According to reports, Yousafzai charges $152,000 per speech, a figure that has been widely compared to former Anglican bishop and social rights activist Desmond Tutu’s reported $85,000 fee.

Aside from the sizeable earnings Malala brings in from her speaking engagements, the young activist’s book deal was reportedly struck to the tune of £2 million. This is before the profits made from the roughly 1.8 million copies sold, according to Nielsen Book Research.

As reported by the Khaleej Times, information that is publicly available shows that Salarzai Ltd, a company set up by Yousafzai’s family in 2013 to protect the rights to her life story, has a net worth of £1.87 million as of August 2015. The company, which is owned by Malala, her father Ziauddin Yousafzai, and her mother, Toor Pekai, has seen an almost 65 per cent increase in net worth from the same period of the previous year.

Salarzai, The Times reports, is a separate enterprise to the charity focused Malala Fund which is aimed at helping girls safely complete secondary education worldwide.

A spokesperson for Malala recently told the MailOnline, “since the publication of Malala’s book, Malala and her family have donated more than $1 million (£750,000) to charities, mostly for education-focused projects across the world, including Pakistan.”

When Malala became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, she also donated $50,000 of the prize money she received toward rebuilding a school in Gaza.

Earlier this year Malala spoke out for Syrian refugees, urging world leaders at a conference in London to give $1.4 billion towards providing access to education for Syrian refugee children.

Last week Malala spoke to a crowd in London’s Trafalgar Square who were gathered for a memorial of murdered Labout MP Jo Cox. She spoke glowingly of Cox’s contributions to refugee causes, saying that the MP “showed us all that you can be small and still be a giant” as well as stating that she will be remembered as a “modern day suffragette.”

Cox, who was a campaigner for refugees’ rights, was shot and stabbed to death by a man in her constituency who yelled the words “Brtitain first” at the scene, a week before Britain’s EU referendum took place.

Malala has also recently heavily criticized Donald Trump’s plans, if elected president, to ban Muslim people from entering the USA. She referred to his comments as being “full of hatred” and “tragic”.

Malala Yousafzai has been internationally known since October 2012 when she was shot by Taliban militants on her way to school in the Swat Valley, Pakistan. The attackers were angered by her outspoken support for girls’ education, and she received medical attention in the UK where she now resides.

Since her horrifying ordeal, Malala has gone on to become the youngest person to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize and has been a tireless activist speaking out for women’s education worldwide as well as releasing her extremely successful and best-selling memoir, ‘I Am Malala’, co-written with Sunday Times journalist Christina Lamb.